Human population density across the world, for the year 2020. The world’s population is approximately 8’000’000’000, and the Earth’s total area, encompassing both land and water, is 510’000’000 square kilometres. Consequently, the global human population density is calculated as 8’000’000’000 divided by 510’000’000, resulting in an average value of 16 people per square kilometre. Provided are (A) a gridded visualisation with 2.5 min resolution, (B) a visualisation of the mean population density per country calculated from the 2.5 min grid (GPWv4), and (C) an animation combining graphics (A) and (B).
The Scientific colour map ‘lajolla‘ is used to represent data accurately and to all readers.
- Creator: Eivind O. Straume
- This version: 01.06.2022
- License: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Specific citation: This graphic by Eivind O. Straume is available via the open-access s-Ink repository.
- Related reference: Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4): Population Density, Beta Release. Palisades, NY: NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). http://dx.doi.org/10.7927/H46T0JKB. Accessed 12.05.2022
- Gridded and mean data versions
- High-res video format
- Perceptually uniform colour map
- Colour-vision deficiency friendly
- Readable in black&white
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The caption explicitly includes land and water in its denominator. Another useful distinction: two equal-area cells with densities of 10 and 90 people/km² have an area-weighted mean of 50, but a population-weighted mean of (10×10 + 90×90)/(10+90) = 82 people/km². These answer different questions: density across space versus density experienced by a randomly selected resident. Disclosure: I represent WorldLensia, whose supplementary guide is linked in my website field. This comment was prepared with AI assistance.
Thank you for the clarification. It is never as easy as it seems, is it? 🙂